


The Muggles of the Magical World

by Hoptaschotchog



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Breaking the Statute of Secrecy, Child Harry Potter, Child Hermione Granger, Loss, Muggles, Original Character(s), Platonic Love, Romance, wizarding war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 22:34:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoptaschotchog/pseuds/Hoptaschotchog
Summary: Muggles and their different paths in discovering the world of Magic.





	The Muggles of the Magical World

**Author's Note:**

> Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling.

_*_

_One - Jack_

_*_

Jack was born after the second world war.

According to his oldest brother Toby – this meant Jack was destined to be silly. “Don’t know nuffin do ya? You’ll never know nuffin if ya ain’t starved like _we_ did.” He would puff out his chest importantly – as if even _Greg_ as Baby had been wizened beyond his years because of rations. Greg was five years older than Jack, five years younger than Toby. Greg was as dumb as a doorknob. And yet it was Jack’s cheek that got pinched as mother would say “Oh dear Jack. Never seen War, lucky child. Let’s keep it that way, eh?”

No Jack had never seen war.

He saw the cobbled lane as he and his brothers rode their bicycles to school. He saw Britain dig itself out of melancholy and their youth rise up with new hope. He saw colour seep into televisions. He saw the colour seep _out_ of his picture book as Connor May tore it to shreds in the rain, scattered fancies of fairies and trolls lost to the wind. He saw his Mother’s scandalised, enchanted gaze as Elvis thrust his hips in tight-white pants. He saw Toby rocking out to Sgt Pepper’s and Greg bring home girls in increasingly short skirts with increasingly vibrant patterns. He saw his father’s tight jaw when he announced he wanted to be an illustrator. He saw two years of working in his father’s shoe factory.

He saw Helen Spencer.

He had caved to his parents will, tucking his drawings away, and stepped foot in the world of University. “Put you head down, get a degree and maybe, you could do something with these” his mother had advised, tracing the line of an inky wing. So, he had. He was studying a sensible degree, he would nod to himself, an unconscious imitation of his father’s whiskery chin-tuck.

He was going to be a dentist.

And so, apparently, was this girl – woman really, if Jack was now meant to consider himself a man. Helen was an absolute bombshell. Long legs, sunny blonde hair and a smile that made him tuck his upper lip over his buck teeth – in the hopes she wouldn’t notice he looked like a startled rabbit. And yet it was impossible to entertain the possibility that she was just a pretty face. There was no room for that misconception, no way you could look in those bright blue eyes and seeing anything but a fierce intelligence. She was often called on by their professors, having gained a reputation for eloquent, precise answers.

She seemed so wise and smart and _capable_ and Jack was so, so doomed from the beginning.

Later, after they were married and dentists and co-owners of a house, she would laugh that bright laugh. “You seemed so smart and quiet and so very sweet and _I_ was doomed from the beginning.” And then she would snort at the drama of it all, calm in the face of being an accomplished, married adult with a job. Jack never dreamed he could have been any of those things. Let alone a Father.

Hermione Jean Granger was born in the September of 1979.

She had his brown eyes, and the Granger curls and heavens above but Jack thought that even when crossing the road, he was a hundred times more anxious than usual. His Hermione would grow up with both her parents and go to a good school and get an excellent job and have everything that she could dream of and so Jack worked very, very hard for that to be true.

By the time their daughter was four, Jack and Helen had relaxed their overprotective grip on her. They’d been relying on friends and neighbours to look after her if they wanted to go out. Helen was the first to suggest they should try a babysitter. It was going to be a few years until Hermione was attending school regularly and Helen could consider going back to work.

Even so – she was heavily involved in Council matters and volunteering, activism very much at the forefront of her mind with a young daughter. All this would be achieved by Helen in the half-days that Hermione would spend at Day-Care, before dropping her laser focus on ‘changing the world – or at least Britain dammit’ and bringing Hermione home into the domestic normalcy of Helen – the mother.

And Helen was a brilliant mother at that. Though Jack privately thought she was focusing too hard on giving Hermione a head-start on education. Their baby girl was going to be smart no matter what.

Jack was reluctant to entrust Hermione to any sitters, even after Helen had gently suggested it over several months. It was on their anniversary, when no one they knew was available, that Jack finally agreed. “Fantastic” Helen clapped. “You know the Johnson’s girl has been eager to earn a bit of money, too young for proper employment see. Already babysat the rotten little Davis boy and apparently handled him like a champ!” she beamed.

“Perfect” Jack had said. And that was that.

Later, Jack thinks it was all the sitters, or the leaving Hermione at friend’s places, or the time at Day-Care and not in _their_ care, or their focus on their careers – Jack picking up his pencils again in his down-time and Helen re-entering the world of dentistry, that led to them not _noticing._

Noticing that Hermione was far more special than they ever could have imagined.

Hermione was six years and five months old when it happened. Jack came home from work half an hour after Helen. She had found herself a position at a different workplace, closer to their residence than his – so she would pick Hermione up from school and take her home at the end of the day.

When Jack stepped through the door, Helen was in the hallway.

“Jack” she’d breathed. Her face was white, blue eyes wide and unblinking. For a brief eternity, the hall had stretched out between them, Jack trying to tear his mind from the reality of teeth, braces, fillings and all things normal, and Helen so obviously in a different world.

She came forwards slowly and wrapped him in a hug. Jack’s heart stuttered, and his stomach dropped out. Not Hermione. Not Hermione. Not our little girl. But _something_ must have happened. ‘Tell me I’m not going mad” she whispered. He lifted a hand to the nape of her neck, fingers brushing though her silky hair that she’d had shorn into a bob.

‘Tell me first what happened” he said back steadily.

She’d erupted in giggles.

He brought her back in alarm, hands coming up to cup her face and thumbs resting beneath her eyes where tears spilled out and over her now rosy cheeks. He searched for pain in her expression but all he saw was pure, unadulterated joy. And yes – a touch of madness.

“What happened Jack – is either I’ve gone completely bonkers – ”, she wheezed through her laughs, whole body shuddering with the force of them, “ –  or magic is real!”

“You _are_ mad” Jack shook his head even as he brushed at her tears.

Helen grinned. “Come with me.”

And she’d led him to Hermione’s room. Light was flickering under the door.

“Have we broken a switch?”

“Shhh…”

Helen edged open the door, hand held tightly in Jack’s.

There had been many events in Jack’s life up until then that had been pivotal, life changing and yet until that day he wouldn’t have been able to choose which ones had the most impact.

On the floor, all tucked up in a patchwork quilt, bushy curls spilling up over the fabric, was Hermione. She was facing away from her parents, towards her purple wall covered in school awards and certificates of merit. An odd assortment of items surrounded her in a semi-circle and in her arms was one of her favourite stories – an illustrated version of Beauty and the Beast. Hermione had been so proud to be reading books with entire sentences on each page.

From over her shoulder, Jack could see she was up to the part where the kitchen and dining things danced and sang songs to Belle.

“Jack look” Helen whispered in his ear.

He looked. One of the items in the semi-circle was a lamp, which provided the light in the room. It glowed brightly, staving off the dimness of the grey afternoon. It occurred to him that it was rather far from where it was usually plugged in. His eyes followed the cord. It wasn’t plugged in.

“What?!” he hissed. “How?”

“I. Have. No. Idea” Helen sounded reverent. Jack looked over his shoulder to see the bulb of the lamp glowing in her eyes. She nudged him.

Jack looked back and almost swore aloud. The teapot and one of the cups was floating. Hovering inches from the ground. Helen let out a hysteric, gulping laugh.

But Hermione flinched and the spell was broken, and the floating crockery dropped, the teapot landing heavily on the carpet and the cup bouncing sharply off and shattering on the wood of the floor.

“Oh no!” Hermione dumped her book and crawled over it to stare at the mess of shards on the ground. She turned to glare at her parents disapprovingly.

Jack and Helen gaped at their child.

“Oh!” Hermione looked embarrassed. “Don’t cry. It’s just a normal teacup after all. It’s not a real boy – not like in the story. I’m not crying, see?” she smiled, reaching out her hands to gather the broken cup.

Helen rushed forwards. “Darling no, let me!” Jack absently touched his face, only then noticing that he was indeed crying.

In bed that evening, neither Jack nor Helen picked up the novels they’d been fervently reading the night before. They stared at the ceiling in silence, lamps still on. Lamps that were plugged nice and normally into the wall.

“Well” Helen said.

“Well” Jack replied.

It was another year or so before Hermione came to them with concern. “Abbie said I was a teacher’s pet and I got very mad and then… Abbie’s nose turned weird.”

“How so?” Jack asked her carefully. They were having tea and Hermione had been poking at her rice unenthusiastically.

“It looked like a dog’s nose”.

Helen took a slow gulp of her water, eyes flicking over to meet Jack’s. “Did it now?”

“It wasn’t for long. But all the kids laughed at her – and I – I didn’t mean to” Hermione spoke nervously, twisting her fork in her little hands. “Abbie’s friend Sarah said I’m not normal. They were screaming.”

Hermione stared at her parents with large, brown eyes. “Am I normal?”

Helen reached for his hand under the table. She looked at her daughter squarely. “No sweetheart. Your special.”

Hermione looked back at them intently, searching their faces. “Okay.”

Jack felt all the air whoosh out of his lungs. “Okay?”

“Yes” Hermione lifter her chin. “That’s okay.”

Helen laughed, soft and wondrously, snatching up the water-bottle in the centre of the table and topping up all their glasses. “A toast” she cheered. “To not being normal!”

And Jack began to laugh. Here they were, two middle-class dentists with an average house and an average lawn; seemingly the epitome of normalcy.

And yet their daughter could make light from nothing and crockery float and Helen’s strawberries grow like magic and bubbles float under water and a girl’s nose turn into a snout.

“Cheers!” Jack beamed at the two loves of his life, deciding then and there to chuck his understanding of reality right out the window – where it had been gripping at the sill for a year now. He’d always been ‘off with the fairies’ and ‘destined to be silly’ anyways.

Jack had been lighter after that. It was easier to deal with the mundane ticking on of everyday life when _magic_ was real. He’d often search the faces on the Tube, wondering if he could tell if someone had powers just by looking at them. If there were small children he’d try extra hard to catch any signs, though he got many disapproving looks in the process.

He paid more attention to fairy tales and magic lore. He bought superhero comics, old library books, read up on the Salem Witches and looked through the history of witch – burnings in medieval times.

Helen was just as focused as he, though in a slightly different direction. She prioritised teaching Hermione -  to know that everyone was special in different ways. But her special needed to be kept quiet. How to accept herself. How to find school important when life outside it was so strange and exciting.

Helen didn’t really need to worry about the last one. Hermione was ever diligent about her grades and her reading. Jack would often find that his library books were in different places than he left them and couldn’t help but feel proud that she was already reading such advanced literature at ten.

And yet Helen and Jack could not help but feel afraid for their daughter. Late at night they would curl together and wonder what would happen if someone were to find out and take their daughter away. Do tests on her… Those nights are solemn and full of trembling fingers as they attempt to melt their fears with each other’s warmth.

In the September of 1990 a man came to visit.

It was a weekend and Helen and Jack were a few glasses into some champagne. When the doorbell rang, and they swung it open to see a man with a long silver beard and half-moon specs, they barely blanched for all the bubbles that had already gone to their heads.

What followed was bizarre, illuminating and quite _sobering._

“Witch”. Jack tasted the word, attempting to palate it and reconcile the gimmicky storybook witches with his _daughter._ It’d been on the list, sure. ‘Anomaly’, ‘superhero’, ‘witch’, ‘Helen and I are insane…’

But it was _real._ The man who had visited had been a Wizard and his daughter was a Witch and all over London, the United Kingdom, the entire world were other Wizards and Witches who could use magic with sticks of wood. And Hermione was being offered a place at a school where she would have her own magic stick to wave about.

Jack _hurt_. He went to work and pulled teeth and hurt _._ He caught the train home and hurt. He looked out on his normal suburban street and hurt.

Jack had felt special when he was growing up. With two older brothers who were neither smart nor creative Jack had felt slightly superior. Sure, Dentist wasn’t much more exciting than Shoemakers but then he’d been the one with a daughter with superpowers…

They’d talked with Albus Dumbledore for hours. Apparently, there was an entire wizarding world, with entire wizarding families who were all entirely _special._

Jack learns that really, he’s not that special at all. He stops drawing.

Almost a year later, a letter arrives.

They’re being asked to decide if they wanted Hermione to enrol in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Jack snorts. He’d read between the lines before, with the silver-bearded man. You don’t really say _no_.

But Helen’s all grins. All golden hair and mischief and living in the moment. All “Jack Granger our daughter is a miracle”.

And so, they say yes.

Albus Dumbledore comes back, so they can introduce Hermione and speak in detail of things like Platform 9 ¾, Diagon Alley and currency exchange. He hands Hermione an official looking letter with a bloody _wax seal_ on it. Hermione’s eleven, almost twelve and oh so serious for her age but the letter makes her red-eyed and smiley.

Jack can’t help being proud, even if he does feel achingly normal.

It’s something Jack presses deep down and learns to almost forget. It’s hard to think anything’s normal when you’ve walked down Diagon Alley, seen self-stirring pots and random clouds of coloured smoke, pointy hats everywhere and sights to make his head spin. He can barely breathe when they are lead to Gringotts Bank by their escort and there are darned _Goblins_ running the place. Helen giggles at random for days afterwards. No life isn’t normal, even if Jack is.

Hermione had insisted on buying what Jack felt was the entire book store in Diagon Alley. But he understands that she’s always felt the need to be in the know.

All together they lay the books out on the table and read and read and read. They share anything that seems interesting or like Hermione should know before she goes to the school. At one point –  Helen leaps up from her book with an “Oh!” She’d been sat silent for several long minutes now with her brow furrowed over the text. “Jack!” she gasps. Before he can reply, she’s run out of the room and to their study. Jack and Hermione look at each other with raised brows.

When she comes back she is walking slowly. In her hands is an A3 page from his art journal. She lays it out on the table so that it faces her Husband and daughter. “Remember that strange night. In the early eighties. Halloween.”

It’s the picture Jack drew that very night. It’s of London, the houses bunched up with no consideration of the laws of physics, as they extend and curve up beyond the horizon. Owls are _everywhere,_ swooping to windows and flocking the sky.

Jack doesn’t think of that night often. In fact, he finds it hard to think of it unless he’s looking at the picture. While at Diagon Alley they had all learned that Wizarding society used owls to communicate. Jack hadn’t connected the dots.

“They were celebrating” Helen says quietly. “The news spread like wildfire – or I suppose like thousands of owls delivering it at once.”

“What news?” Hermione asked.

Helen halted. “I’ve been reading of their war…”

Jack pales. “War? They were involved in the - Second World War?”

“No. I don’t know – maybe” Helen shakes her head. “But this one – I’ve never heard of it before now.”

They wait for her to go on.

Helen lifts her eyes to Jack’s and suddenly he’s afraid. She takes a deep breath and turns to Hermione. “Hermione sweetheart, what I’m about to tell you – ” she sweeps a hand over the page in her book “ – it’s over. They won the war.”

Helen tells them of the man who rose to power in the wizarding world, of his plight to purge Wizarding society. Jack shudders in his chair. He grew up relatively happy, discovering life from his quiet corner in London where there was a house, a shoe shop, a school, the lolly store, the university he attended and not much else. It’s hard to imagine that at any point there was an evil man with an evil snake – it’s comical even.

But his daughter sits at their table – magic in her veins. Jack shudders to think of her two years on this earth while a madman wagered war against her very existence.

No Jack had never seen war.

Even when he’d apparently lived through it. He grits his teeth.

“The books says that there was a baby boy born on the 31st of July 1980. That he killed He Who Must Not Be Named.”

Jack frowns at her. She waves her hand. “They have a spell that kills. It rebounded. The baby, little Harry Potter, survived. And the World celebrated. Without us” Helen hiccups a laugh.

Jack sees it in her now, that feeling reflected back at him. Normal. So Normal in this crazy world. How did we miss out on the magic? Though Jack, backtracks a step, looking at his daughter, they couldn’t quite say they’d missed out on the magic.

Hermione takes the book from Helen and retreats to her room.

“Our baby’s not exactly going to Oz, Jack.”

“The war’s over, Helen.”

Oh how right she was and how wrong _he_ was.

The next year is surreal. For a long while Helen and Jack wait with bated breaths to hear of Hermione’s friends. After letters and letters of just schoolwork and classes and ‘wow the library here is – ’, they slowly lose hope.

It’s not like Hermione was bullied at school before Hogwarts. They just – never saw her really connect with kids her age. There were no best friends… So it comes as a shock when they receive a letter mid - November.

A letter about two insufferable boys that she actually –  might like – quite a lot. Who seemed to like her back. There’s quite a few raised eyebrows between Jack and Helen as they read. Two _boys?_ It’s not what they’d been expecting, that’s for sure. Tactical as ever, Hermione leads them through several letters with mentions of Ron and Harry before she drops the bomb.

“Harry Potter!” Helen yelps. The Granger’s had become well acquainted with every bit of wizarding history they could get their hands on since and the legend of Harry Potter – the boy who lived – was quite familiar to them now.

Hermione admonishes them when she comes home for Christmas, where they lay in wait to wrap her up in suffocating hugs.

“He’s just a normal boy! I’m smarter than he is” she flushes after this and averts her gaze “though he is very brave.” Jack and Helen share a _look._

“So tell us about Ron.”

Talking about Ron, must – apparently -  be kicked off by a big old eye roll and an exasperated huff.

Jack feels a bit like someone’s playing tug-of-war with his life if he’s being honest. Day in day out a Dentist and his drawings tools drowning further in the junk of his desk drawers. While out there somewhere in Scotland is his daughter, learning magic and sending back increasingly vague and confusing letters of her adventures.

Helen positively has a skip to her step.

Jack thinks he catches her being smug sometimes, looking out on suburban London and thinking “Ha!” My daughter’s a Witch and _yours_ isn’t.

It’s when Hermione is sixteen and just come back from her fifth year at Hogwarts that the charade is broken.

They wait on the Platform as the Hogwarts Express rolls in, the novelty of being surrounded by Wizards and Witches still as strong as that first time. They wait as Hermione says goodbye to her friends. They’ve met Harry and Ron a few times now along with a whole bunch of the Weasley family, including that uproariously hilarious Arthur Weasley. Every time they speak with the man they have to choke back the giggles.

There is a few extra friends this year, a blonde boy and girl who look unrelated. The Weasley girl, Ginny, seems to be sticking very close too. Hermione gives her a long, tight hug. By the fact that the blond boy has a vice grip on a toad, Jack supposes he must be Neville Longbottom. He’s not sure who the girl is though.

Slowly, Jack becomes aware of the glances that are accompanied with pointing hands and whispers. Harry Potter is famous, he and Helen know. But this year the attention seems different. It’s localised around Harry but the whole little group seems to be the subject of their attentions.

Jack eyes Helen from the corner of his eye. She’s already frowning back at him.

They bring Hermione home. It doesn’t take long to notice that her chest is sore. She keeps rubbing it, or tracing a diagonal line across her front absently, or holding a fist to her heart. At first it’s ‘just a scratch from Crookshanks’. Then Helen catches her staring out the window one morning, tears in her eyes. Their Hermione doesn’t brood. “Oh sweetheart, please, _what_ happened?”

The story comes out.

Well – the stories. She tells of the troll and the Philosopher’s stone, the Chamber of Secrets and the prisoner they saved from Azkaban. Of Voldemort’s return in the third task of the Triwizard Tournament. Of the Prophet’s denial and Harry’s frustration. Of the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore’s Army. Of going to the Ministry.

Jack feels like he’s been ripped apart and thrown to the wind. Helen’s face is grey and devastated.

They subscribe to the Daily Prophet.

In the following years, he supposes they might have clutched her to them too hard. Suffocated her in their love. There’s so many holidays and presents and pretending. Maybe that’s what did it.

Because one day Jack looks up from the Sunday Times and reaches automatically for a second paper. He shakes his head. They only receive one paper.

Breakfast is eggs sunny-side up. The sky is drab and silver. His wife is sitting across from him.

A question rises up his throat, flops onto the table between them before he can choke it down with his food.

“Why did we never have children?”

Helen freezes, hand toying her necklace. Her eyes glass over. There’s a gulf between them, Jack can feel it so palpably that his throat closes over. There’s something missing. Theirs was a whirlwind romance; married and with jobs as dentists before he could really blink his eye.

Jack suddenly feels displaced, wondering how he got there, to this point in his life where he sits at the same old table, with the same old job in the same old neighbourhood. And he’d thought he’d be an Artist one day.

He thought he’d be a father.

A hysterical laugh bubbled up his throat, squeezed up past that lump and cracked like a whip. Helen looked like he may as well have slapped her.

Jack was a fool.

He tells Helen.

Her jaw tightens. “No. We’re not doing this.” She looks down at her slice of toast still dripping with egg yolk. She goes to the window and lugs it into Mr. Martin’s lawn. Mr. Martin was a right sod. “Australia.” She marches back to him. “Wasn’t that always our dream?” She seems so unsure. Jack gapes at her. But Australia… yes, yes. Hadn’t they always said? “Australia” Helen nods.

They buy one – way tickets to Perth, Australia.

For a year they breath in sunshine. The air is so much cleaner here, and Jack feels like each breath sweeps dust from his lungs. They try snorkelling and even surfing – which they’re both pants at. Jack starts drawing again. They’re not too concerned about money just yet. They know they can both find jobs easy enough if needs be, but – for a while – they just need to breathe.

Helen decides to finish her floristry course – what she’d been studying before she had switched degrees to become a dentist. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a florist. Besides – I wanted to be earning money – and quick” she says. But here in Australia, where they aren’t quite sure why they hadn’t come here sooner – apparently being a florist seems right again.

Not long after Helen has finished her course and becomes an assistant florist in Subiaco, their life takes another turn.

“There’s a new girl at Rokeby” Helen tells him one afternoon. They’re tucked up inside as the weather’s gotten blustery and cold. Jack wishes it was sunshine all year round. “She’s English. Beautiful arrangements, really has the eye for floristry.”

Over the next few weeks, Jack hears more and more about this girl. “She tells me rather a lot about her boyfriend for a stranger. I find I don’t mind though, really Jack. She’s so bright. And sweet”. Helen chuckles as she shakes sand from their beach towels. It’s not too cold to go to the beach, though the Aussies might disagree. “She reminds me of you Jack.”

Jack feels a pang in his heart.

A week later it’s “Do you mind if she visits for tea Jack?”

So Hermione Jean visits for tea.

She’s a nervous girl, Jack thinks, her fingers trembling as he shakes her sweaty hand. She has straight white teeth and bushy hair and worldly brown eyes. She smiles tremulously at him and raises a thin stick of wood.

Jack only has time to start fitting his mouth around the question before he sinks into sleep.

He wakes up with a daughter.

One he’s very angry at. One who tells them through shaking sobs and pleading words of the War she had to protect them from. Of her part in it.

No Jack had never seen War.

Though he thinks he sees it now – in his daughter’s eyes, in the thin bones of her arms, in the scarred words across her body. He wants to lash out at fate, at the world, at the never-ending _joke_ that he couldn’t protect her from it, didn’t even _know_ about it.

He swallows down his rage and wraps his child in his arms.

No Jack had never seen War.


End file.
